A self-described “guerilla gardener,” Finley began planting
food gardens on abandoned city lots in south-central Los Angles. He was
concerned that not only were too many people going hungry in his neighborhood,
but that they when they did eat, they were eating the wrong kinds of foods.
“People are dying from curable diseases,” according to Finley
and in his neighborhood, “dialysis centers started popping up like Starbucks”
due to the lack of access to healthy foods. In South-Central Los Angles, “The
drive-thru is killing more people than the drive-by,” he quipped.
I stumbled on this video at the same time I was reading a
book entitled, “Slow Church” by authors C. Christopher Smith and John Pattison.
In it, they posit that the “fast food” culture has also infected our nation’s
spiritual nourishment with over-reliance efficiency, predictability, and quick
fixes. Surrendering to the “cult of speed,” we engage in scripted worship and
attempt to apply church growth models with little consideration of the local
context.
The authors note in the final section that Nature itself
offers us an
“economy of abundance.”
All human economies operate under the law of scarcity. The
harder something is to create or obtain, the more the item “costs.” Scarcity
drives prices up; while abundance drives prices down.
The reason Ron Finley has witnessed a steady decline in
healthy foods in his neighborhood is due to the abundance of unhealthy
alternatives. The reason why a cheeseburger costs less in Oak Ridge, than say a
market fresh salad, is because the fresh vegetables are less abundant in most
of our restaurants.
Ironically, this is actually the EXACT OPPOSITE of what
Nature tries to teach us in our relationship with the Earth (and we happen to
live on a very fertile portion of it!). I personally believe that God’s economy,
like Nature’s, is an economy of abundance: one healthy apple tree produces as
many as 100+ apples in a given year. Each apples contains an average of four
seeds. That one tree is capable of producing hundreds of trees! This is an
economy of abundance, not scarcity. And it works for most everything that grows
– beans, squash, okra, peppers, peas, tomatoes, zucchini, corn, etc.!!
So if God and Mother Nature have co-conspired to provide
human beings with an economy of abundance, why are there millions of people in
the United States, and several hundred people in Oak Ridge, without access to
healthy food? Worse than that, why are some of our neighbors going to bed
hungry?
There are several reasons, but here are my top three:
1. The cult of speed. Most Americans are over-worked and under-paid. Our schedules control us
far more than we control our schedules! In the “cult of speed,” taking time to
exploit the abundance we are provided in a garden feels more costly than simply
grabbing the fish sticks from the freezer and opening a box of dehydrated
mac-n-cheese.
Time gardening is time we could be
doing something else, or so the argument would go. However, the research suggests
that the “something else” we are doing, isn’t nearly as healthy for us as
gardening, which multiplies the problem. Research reveals gardening is good for
both body and soul and well worth the time we spend in the dirt.
2. Lack of vision. Let’s face it, it is very hard to imagine cutting
back our city’s hunger problem with fresh vegetables in a community garden.
Kids want those chicken nuggets, not fresh okra. One garden, or a dozen
gardens, won’t get a kid eating more green. If we’re totally honest even as
adults, the super-bacon cheeseburger from our favorite fast food chain sounds
better to most of us too.
I love what Ron Finley discovered
however in his gardening initiatives: “If kids grow kale, kids eat kale. When
kids grow tomatoes, kids eat tomatoes.” It’s hard to imagine a healthy
alternative, when the opposite is thrown in our faces every week. We’re
bombarded with fast food commercials – nobody advertises fresh kale. Our minds
and our senses are constantly bombarded with an “anti-visions” of fresh food
and therefore it is difficult to see beyond them.
When we (especially we as churches) dream
up solutions, they are often “fast” solutions, like food pantries filled with
canned, and often overly-processed, vegetables. It’s easier for us and easier
for our visitors to simply take a can off the shelf and send them on their way.
In so doing, we unwittingly reinforce the “cult of speed.” Furthermore, we
offer a “disconnect” between food and its source (work!) under a banner of
benevolence; and though the content is different, the delivery system is very
similar to that of a “fast-food” establishment.
3. The free-loader problem. Anyone that’s managed a food garden knows that it is a
thousand times easier to find people during the harvest season than it is the
planting season. People would rather pick than plant – that’s just human
nature.
Our tendency is to not want to put in
any more sweat equity than we have to on things, especially when others aren’t
doing the same. “If I help the needy, I would rather just write a check,” we
say. “It’s easier to do a can food drive for the hungry.”
Welcome back to problem #1 – “the cult
of speed.” Samuel Johnson once said, “What is easy is seldom excellent.” In
fact, Nature again teaches us that “easy” often leads to atrophy -- from our
own body’s circulatory system all the way to our Western ideals – easy leads to
unfit solutions.
The garden teaches us an economy of abundance, but more than
even that, I believe it teaches us patience. Lasting change is typically slow
change – this is true in biology and spirituality. The best minds and hearts
that I have ever known were as patient as they were exacting. I would be
willing to bet that the best communities are too.
Community gardens have the potential to be both. I would like
to return with a second part to these ideas, offering some practical ways they
could be realized in Oak Ridge.
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